Jae-Hoon Hwang, KeonYoung Chung, Marcelo Cabral, Spyridoula Vazou, Yong-Gwan Song

Teamwork is a crucial process for youth sport teams to accomplish a successful season. Despite that teamwork preparation is considered an influential bridge between environmental factors and individual outcomes, there is a paucity of research investigating team preparation as a mediator. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to examine how team preparation mediates the relationship between peer motivational climate and mental toughness of male youth athletes. A total of 526 male youth soccer players of elite middle and high school, and university soccer teams completed a survey at their sport facility. Multiple regression and mediation analysis were conducted to examine the associations among peer motivational climate, team preparation, and mental toughness, using SPSS. The results showed significant positive direct associations among peer task motivational climate, team preparation, and mental toughness except for the association between peer task climate and mental toughness, and negative direct association between peer ego motivational climate and team preparation. For mediation analysis, team preparation positively and negatively mediated the relationships between peer task and ego climate, and mental toughness, respectively. These results indicate that when peer groups form a task motivational climate, athletes are likely to prepare for their season collaboratively, and it can be positively related to individuals’ psychological growth. This underscores the importance of team preparation, and it provides practitioners with prospective insight into how they can design their coaching strategies to benefit both teams and individuals using various team building activities.